be filled by the character he portrayed. But directors who had had experience of him, talked about his “natural meanness” and shook their heads. When his name was mentioned it had become the fashion to add a follow-up sentence: “Seems impossible the same parents could have produced him and Anne.” People who tried to be sympathetic with Anne about him got little satisfaction. All the most persistent ever extracted was an admission that Joe was “difficult.” No one—not even Sybil or Hugh Bassett—ever heard what she felt about the fight he had had with another boy over a game of pool which had nearly landed him in the Elmira Reformatory. Bassett had dragged him out of that, and Bassett had found him work afterward, and Bassett had boosted and helped and lectured [Pg 25]him since. And not for love of Joe, for in his heart Bassett thought him a pretty hopeless proposition.

[Pg 25]

That evening, alone in her parlor, Anne was thinking about him. He had no engagement and no expectation of one, and it was not wise to leave him alone in the flat without occupation. “Satan” and “the idle hands” was a proverb that came to your mind in connection with Joe. She went to the window and leaned out. The air rose from the street, breathless and dead, the heated exhalation of walls and pavements baked all day by the merciless sun. Passers-by moved languidly with a sound of dragging feet. At areaways red-faced women sat limp in loose clothing, and from open windows came the crying of tired little children. To leave Joe to this while she was basking in the delights of Gull Island—apart from anything he might do—it wasn’t fair. And then suddenly the expression of her face changed and she drew in from the window—Hugh Bassett was coming down the street.

The bell rang, she pushed the button and presently[Pg 26] he was at the door saying he was passing and thought he’d drop in for a minute. He was a big thick-set man with a quiet reposeful quality unshaken even by the heat. It was difficult to think of Bassett shaken by any exterior accident of life, so suggestive was his whole make-up of a sustained equilibrium, a balanced adjustment of mental and physical forces. He had dropped in a great deal this summer and as the droppings-in became more frequent Anne’s outside engagements became less. They always simulated a mutual surprise, giving them time to get over that somewhat breathless moment of meeting.

[Pg 26]

They achieved it rather better than usual to-night for their minds were full of the same subject. Bassett had come to impart the good 

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